hurricane katrina, in louisiana, whether it was hurricane camille in the early 1960s in south mississippi when it hit the tip there. whenever the center of circulation crosses the land, that s official landfall but make no mistake, the beginning i wall has made landfall in the florida panhandle east of panama city beach, east to panama city right along highway 98, just around davis beach, to the north of mexico beach, it s about to get the eye wall itself. the eye wall this moment, the eastern edge of the eyeball is hitting davis beach right now. getting winds at 145, 150 miles an hour sustained with gusts higher. alligator point florida, what s it like there. how are you?
this is 25 stories tall, as you know we ve got a room up there on the 23rd floor, what you are seeing is amplified as you go higher. we are getting it and were not going to get the very worst of it. as you can perhaps tell, it s actually quite a show. shepard: it certainly is, really quickly back to the map, when the storm comes forward, here s panama city beach year, the eye is moving here. they will get winds out of the north end when the storm moves up they will get winds out of the west. so eventually you will have water coming at you from the west, jeff. i d say three hours from now. what did you say, how many hours?
it pushes you around but i think my wind gauge isn t that accurate. shepard: you are on panama city beach, i m talking about panama city a good 10 miles east of you. you should be in tropical storm force winds where you are. still doing some damage out here, obviously we are in a bit of a lull. the big difference between this storm in florence s florence had so much rain associated with it and it was moving so slowly. this one is barreling through here and it s not going to dump as much water. that s good news for the panhandle but with the winds predicted, winds they haven t seen before, there could be significant damages. on the other corner, i watched a sign get blown out and another
could get category 2 force winds but the city of panama city itself will get worse. this is a live local radar, this is the eye wall, it will hit somewhere along tyndall parkway and tyndall air force base, that s a beach area. panama city beach, panama city is actually inland so by the time this eye wall goes across tyndall air force base, comes up to parker and hits panama city, hitting panama city city proper is another two and a half hours away. we know the story is moving, the eye of the storm is moving at a forward speed of about 14 miles an hour so it s going to take that long, the distance between here and there is more than 15 miles. it will make landfall somewhere around tyndall air force base and continuing this general direction, the eastern side of panama city, all the way up into
evacuation order. one hotel that was going to let us stay there at the very last minute, we just can t do it. they really were on the beach getting people off the gulf coast, getting them to move further inland. there are some people still there and they may be at risk tonight. shepard: this is live from panama city proper and you can see they are having some problems. the locals refer to it affectionately, the locals do as the redneck riviera, lived there for years and absolutely love it there. it has been spared, complete disaster by 12 miles. this storm jogged to the right in the last few hours, jogged to the right by ten, 12, 15 miles and as a result panama city